Article written by Gerhard Grundhammer

Aged 18, Barbara Rittner was the first German ever to win the wimbledon juniors tournament, which lead her to the decission to become a professional tennis player.

Now, 12 years later, Barbara is one of the veterans on the tour. She captured 2 WTA titles (Antwerp 2001 and Schenectady in 1990), and finished in the Top 100 for 12 consecutive years now! Barbara never made it into a Grand Slam quarterfinal and her best position was no24 of the world, but her experience always makes her to a dangerous opponent.

Barbara was born 29 years ago in the German City Krefeld, and counts as offensive allrounder, who knows the way to the net very well, and she will surely try to attack Jelena at every possible moment, as she knows, thats the only way for her, to be successful vs. the no9 of the world.

Last year, the current no 87 of the world, produced really strange results, and only by looking at, WHERE these results happened, if found something like a consistancy: At events, played in Germany, Barbara beat players like Daniliidou, Farina Elia, Likhovtseva, Dementieva and Myskina, but without the support of the crowd she lost to as famous players as Vento-Kabchi, Matevzic, Lamade or worlds no 248 Amanda Grahame!

2003 started quite disappointing for the German no4. She entered 3 tournaments down under and lost all three first round matches very close in three sets. After that, she got cought by a nasty bronchitis and could not play for more than a month. And so it happened, that only yesterday, Barbara won her first match of 2003 vs. Canadian Maureen Drake 3-6, 6-4 and 7-6.

Jelena played her two times before. The first time they met was in 2000 at Leipzig where Jelena won in straight sets. About half a year later Rittner tried her luck again, and lost 6-4, 2-6 and 2-6.

I found two funny statements of the girls from the past-match press converence:

Barbaras first sentence was: "Her returns were amazing. I mean, i did not serve bad at all, but it was just incredible how she returned my serves" whilst Jelena seemed to have viewed that match from a different ancle: "Yes, it was surely a good work-out......." :-)

My conclusion after i wrote all that down: Assuming that the court, the game, the crowd, the location, the fitness and last but not least the experience of Jelenas doubles-partner Nadja Petrova with Rittner just lately, are all in favour for the jugoslavian, the only player out there who can beat Jelena will be Jelena herself.

Unfortunately she is really good at beating herself, lately :-(